


After You've Gone

by belleevangeline



Category: The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Genre: F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Memories, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21760972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belleevangeline/pseuds/belleevangeline
Summary: Naveen is let in a bit more on Tiana's history.
Relationships: Eudora & Naveen, Eudora & Tiana, Naveen/Tiana (Disney)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	After You've Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 10th anniversary!!! This is the piece I wrote for "Blue Skies and Sunshine", which is a fanzine that I and dozens of other PATF fans collaborated on to celebrate the film. Now that it's the official anniversary, I'm allowed to share my contribution in full!

“Success,” Naveen called out with a childish smile as he carried the box of wedding memorabilia down the stairs to where Eudora was waiting on the sofa with her afternoon cup of tea. Tiana followed closely behind, and although he couldn’t see her face, he was certain there was a charmed smile currently aimed at him, one that matched her mother’s.

“You found it, huh?” said Eudora.

“It was behind my old cookbooks,” said Tiana.

“It’s fitting, really,” Naveen added slyly, as if warning them that a joke was incoming. “It tells you everything you need to know about where _I_ fall in my wife’s esteem.”

She gave him a gentle whack on the shoulder with the back of her hand as she quickened her pace to enter the living room ahead of him. He caught up to her as she sat down next to Eudora, and he set the box down on the coffee table.

“I know we saved an invitation or two, if you want that as well,” he said as he pulled out a few wedding photos that he and Tiana had yet to frame or display anywhere.

“Perfect,” said Eudora jubilantly. She put her cup on the table, careful not to spill on the blank scrapbook pages in front of her, and stood up to look over Naveen’s shoulder at the photos. When he held up the second one in the stack, she gasped and took it from him, grinning.

“Look at this one, babycakes,” she said, flipping it around to show Tiana. It was a picture of Tiana in her wedding gown with her bridesmaids in St. Anthony’s Garden. She and Lottie had been captured while laughing at something with the other ladies looking on. Lottie was holding onto Tiana’s shoulder for support while doubled over, and Tiana herself was smiling wide with a hand against her brow.

“Wish I could remember what was so funny,” Tiana said with a chuckle.

“I swear,” said Eudora, turning it back to herself. “This is just like the one from Charlotte’s tenth birthday. Let me see if I can find it…” She went back and bent over the book to flip through the older pages, while Naveen took out some more photos, the dried bridal bouquet, and a few small gifts that they hadn’t found a use for yet.

“This one,” she said when she found the picture in question, which showed Lottie and Tiana seated at the table in the La Bouffs’ gazebo, giggling over the card Lottie was reading.

“Now _this_ one I remember,” Tiana said with a smile.

“What _I_ remember is you two bein’ awfully coy about what you put in that card,” said Eudora, an eyebrow raised. “Think you can let me in on it now?”

“Secret between friends, Mama,” said Tiana, shrugging. “You know I can’t hang Lottie out to dry like that.”

“It must be very incriminating,” said Naveen, pointing at the photo. “Look at those devious little faces!” Their laughter may not have been as intense as in the wedding photo, but the light in Tiana’s face was the same. He’d have recognized it anywhere.

Eudora’s face softened.

“Well, whatever it was, it got you laughin’ again.”

Tiana’s smile faded somewhat.

“That was a few months after my Daddy died,” she explained to Naveen, likely having picked up on his confusion.

Naveen’s face fell. At this point Tiana and Eudora both had tears in their eyes, and in a strange way, it made him feel guilty for not missing James.

Probably not wanting any of them to dwell, Eudora wiped her eyes.

“You know, Naveen,” she said. “I think you two would’ve gotten along perfectly.”

“Would’ve made him grateful to finally have someone in the family to joke with,” said Tiana.

Naveen perked up at that.

“You think so?”

“Sure,” said Eudora. “‘Course, he might’ve been as skeptical as I was when Tiana said she was engaged to a prince she knew for two days.”

“Mama,” Tiana said, feigning offense.

“ _But_ ,” Eudora continued. “He knew she wouldn’t be one to fall for some con-man’s charms. So maybe that’s not right. He’d have kept a more open mind about the whole thing.”

“I see Tiana did not get _everything_ from her father,” said Naveen with a smirk.

Tiana gaped at him for a second before standing up to go through the box’s contents herself.

“If my family is done gangin’ up on me,” she said, giving them a stern look that failed to hide her amusement. “Why don’t we get back to the scrapbook, huh?”

“Oh,” Eudora said, something else on the table having piqued her interest. “Babycakes, why haven’t you used this yet?” She held up one of the long-ignored wedding gifts, a set of supplies for hand-coloring photos. “Mrs. Jackson loves hers, she was so sure you would, too!”

“Mama, you’ve seen those pictures hangin’ in her kitchen. This -”

She took the kit and held it so the front label faced out.

“- could go wrong. Very easily.”

“Oh, come on,” said Eudora, waving her off. “You could make ‘em look nice.”

“Yes,” said Naveen, shrugging. “And hey, why simply color them in when we can make them _truly_ artistic?”

“Naveen,” Tiana said, her tone making it a little harder to tell if she really was annoyed now.

“What? We can make your gown all the colors of the rainbow, and give the bridesmaids angel wings!”

She didn’t respond, just swiveled around and put the kit back in the box.

In the back of his mind, Naveen had a flash of a thought that, were he a better artist, he might have been tempted to paint in some figures who were missing.

* * *

That night, once Eudora had said goodnight and gone home, Naveen came out of the kitchen where he’d been washing dishes to see Tiana poring over the book again. This time there was no smile. All he saw on her face were streaks of tears as she cried silently, seeming not to even notice - a habit of hers. He sighed, his face and shoulders falling. Saying nothing, he walked over and sat down next to her on the sofa. She sat up and almost instinctively rested her head on his shoulder as he put his arm around her. He laid his own head on top of hers and squeezed her arm, gently, only to remind her that he was there, as if she would doubt it.

After a moment, Tiana stopped crying, and Naveen looked down to see that her face had gone blank. This was one of two possible outcomes that followed a crying spell when she was hit harder than usual. The pang of grief turned either to happiness at an especially fond memory or to numbness, when she was simply exhausted from missing James so much.

They were surrounded by total silence, not even a shift in their seats, a sniffle, or a cleared throat. Naveen had always hated silence, so reflexively, he thought of something that would fill it.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about today?”

Tiana blinked. “What?”

“When I was growing up,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know why I never told you this before, but... I had an aunt, Amita. I used to spend every summer with her and my cousins. She had a house on the coast where all of us could go swimming, canoeing -”

“What, she didn’t have a yacht?”

Naveen gave Tiana a sideways glance. She was looking up at him with one eyebrow raised, smirking with self-satisfaction. He rolled his eyes and played along.

“Well, not one that she kept _at her house._ ”

“Smart woman. Y’all would’ve trashed it.”

He laughed, “You know they’re _your_ family now, too.”

“So I can criticize,” she said with mock defensiveness. “It’s out of love.”

“You -” he started, a finger raised in protest. “- have got me there.” He lowered his hand and smiled. “But anyway, that is not the point. At night, we would always sit together and talk, or tell stories, play music… But I was the youngest, and once my cousins all started getting older, it felt like they had so much more in common with just each other, and I was by myself.”

He continued, eyes downcast, “So, one night -when I was maybe eleven, twelve? She saw me sulking alone in the corner while they were all looking through some book they wouldn’t let me see, one of those, ah...what do you call them? Something about fruit?” He waved his hand in the air as if trying to conjure up the word.

“Pulp,” said Tiana.

“Pulp,” he repeated, flicking his wrist with his index finger slightly extended toward her. “Thank you. So she came up to me while they were all reading their pulp and making dirty jokes, and she showed me a new book of sheet music she had and asked if I wanted to learn to play one of the songs on her old ukulele.”

“I thought you had a tutor for that?”

“I did, for a few years after that, but Aunt Amita taught me the basics first. I remember every day for the rest of the summer I asked if she would give me another lesson, but I think even then she was already starting to get sick. She always listened to me play, though, no matter how awful it sounded. You want to know the first song I tried to play in full?”

Tiana furrowed her brow and smirked.

“Oh no,” she said, her voice hinting at laughter. “What was it?”

“The _Tiger Rag_.”

“Oh, _no_.”

“What’s worse, I thought I was supposed to play all the different parts.”

Tiana pressed a hand to her forehead and shook her head slowly, her laugh finally coming out.

“Poor auntie,” she said.

“I don’t even want to think - the headache I must have given her,” Naveen said, laughing along with her. “Obviously it was too fast for me; I strummed so hard my fingers started bleeding.”

“Ooh,” Tiana said, wincing.

“Yes, so _then_ we had to stop the little concert to get bandages. She told me I did a good job anyway, and I must have loved playing so much that I couldn’t even tell I was in pain right away. She said it could be a good thing, loving something that much.” He sighed. “She died before Ralphie was born, and I used to resent it much more, that he never got to meet her. I just _know_ he would have adored her. He looks like her too, you know. He has her nose, and her chin.”

Tiana smiled softly up at him, listening intently. She was relishing the chance to learn more about how he became who he was. She didn’t say it, but he knew it had to be true, because he also took every opportunity to try to piece together what made her so incredible.

“Ralphie loves your music,” she said.

“I know,” said Naveen, the memory of playing his brother to sleep when he was a toddler warming him. “The first few years after she died, it helped to play for him. It felt like - I don’t know, it kept her there somehow.”

“I think it did.”

He figured she’d have known.

Tiana stood up and closed the book, wiping the remaining tears from her eyes.

“I’m headin’ to bed,” she said, then held out a hand to stop Naveen from speaking. “I’ll have a glass of water first, don’t you worry.” She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek before starting down the hall to the kitchen.

As Naveen opened the book back up to look through some old family photos, he heard the sound of water pouring from a pitcher, then a faint,

_“Goodnight, y’all.”_

He had no view of the kitchen from here, but he knew she was looking out the window, whispering to whatever lights she could see.


End file.
